


An Indifferent Domesticity

by AndreaLyn



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The question is, do you believe that the last few months with you here has been me changing or just a con?"</p>
<p>Arthur and Eames split up. It's up to Cobb to understand why Eames is the one to turn up on his doorstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Indifferent Domesticity

Three years ago, Eames stole a kiss from Arthur. He snuck his fingers into the fabric of Arthur’s lapels and pressed him against the alley walls just outside the Conciergerie. The lights were coming on after a night of darkness and they had played this game for far too long.  
  
Two years ago, they continued to chase each other around the world from Sydney to Mombasa to Paris to London to New York and all the points in between.  
  
One year ago, they moved into Eames’ central London flat with the intent to give things a real try.   
  
Right now, it happens on a platform as the second-to-last train from Paris brings passengers back from their weekend destinations and hurried people rush out before Monday morning can arrive. Eames is carrying little more than a slim suitcase and Arthur is holding onto his attaché with a white-knuckled grip. If strangers looked at them, it might appear to be a friendly conversation, but to anyone who knows them, Eames’ bloodshot eyes and Arthur’s downturned lips would give them away.  
  
After three years, they’ve come to the end of another set of dismal conversations – some hushed and whispered and spoken maturely, some shouted and raged and carried at the tops of their lungs. It’s led them to this.  
  
“Are you sure?” Eames speaks, his voice hushed as he leans in forward, adjusting Arthur’s tie for him and knotting it carefully. “Are you sure about this?”  
  
“We can’t have this conversation again, Eames,” Arthur replies, pained. His lips – already curved downwards – seem to descend even more at the revisiting of the topic. “We want different things and we’re long past the age now where we can play pretend. One day, you’re going to wake up and you’re going to resent me for not being able to give you those things.”  
  
Eames presses his lips together and stares to the train at their side, Eurostar waiting to take Eames away. “I do love you, you know,” is his casual remark, almost off-hand.  
  
Arthur’s smile somehow turns sadder at that. “I know,” he agrees. “And you know I feel the same. Which is why you had better not do anything stupid, Eames,” he warns, voice shaking just the once as he grabs hold of Eames’ shoulder to add extra weight to the threat. “You know I’ve always got eyes on you.”  
  
Eames nods just the once and takes a step back.   
  
He boards the train with suitcase in hand, settling in a window in the car directly beside Arthur. He doesn’t take his eyes off Arthur as the train leaves the station. That night, Arthur will go to the shooting range and put three magazines straight thought a sheet’s forehead and Eames will get drunker than he’s ever been in a dining car on tiny bottles alone.  
  
In the morning, their worlds are vastly different from the way they once were.   
  
*  
  
Cobb had heard of the split through a source based out of Manila who reluctantly said that  _Arthur and Eames are no more, I don’t know why, but they’re not together. So watch out_. So when the doorbell rings, Cobb goes to answer it expecting to find a broken point man on his doorstep, waiting to be put back together.  
  
He doesn’t expect to find Eames.  
  
Eames, who has a pink nose and flushed cheeks. Eames, who claps him on the back and greets him with an ‘evening, mate, how’s it going?’ and pushes inside without an invitation like he’s never needed one to begin with.  
  
“Eames?”  
  
“S’my name,” Eames agrees, sniffling once more and peering out the back windows. “Are the children around? I’d like to say hello.”  
  
“Eames,” Cobb reiterates, not sure what he’s meant to say in this situation. He’s still sure that his loyalty is bound to Arthur if it ever came up, but Arthur isn’t the one who travelled half the world to get here. After a moment, he takes pity on the man. “They’re playing in the valley outside with their grandmother. They’ll be back up for lunch.”  
  
“Good,” Eames says softly. “Good,” he repeats, a little firmer. “I brought presents.”  
  
Cobb finds out later that Eames has also brought enough to stay for weeks.   
  
He finds out weeks later that the clothes aren’t just meant for weeks, but are intended to last for months. By that point in time, he can’t bring himself to turn Eames out the door and has started to be glad for the other man’s presence. The Miles’ don’t have to be around nearly as much and Cobb is glad to give them a break. It’s good to have someone in the house that’s good with kids and knows how to do all the voices in the story (James’ main complaint is that Cobb does them ‘wrong’).  
  
It’s good to have someone in the house who understands both of Cobb’s worlds – the one in the dark shadows and the one that involves Lucky Charms at six in the morning before cartoons.  
  
“You know,” Cobb says absently as he pours Eames his third cup of coffee one morning. “It’s not like I have high traffic coming in and out of the guest room. You might as well officially move in.”  
  
“Who says I meant to?”  
  
Cobb affords Eames a pointed look because there’s no point in fooling themselves. He takes pleasure in the way Eames tries to hide his pleased grin behind the rim of his plain white coffee mug.   
  
Eames shifts the paper before him and turns to the Arts section after handing Cobb the front flap of World Events. “Well, I suppose there is nowhere else I was meaning to go.”  
  
*  
  
Cobb realizes that Arthur and Eames aren’t exactly dealing with the cessation of their relationship in the most mature of ways when he comes home early one day and hears voices coming from Eames’ room. “Fuck, Eames, I’m not asking to rekindle our relationship,” comes Arthur’s ragged voice. “Just one night,” he begs. “Just one more night.”  
  
He knocks on Eames’ door lightly. “Everything okay in there?”  
  
“Come in, Dom,” Eames beckons tiredly. Cobb debates this, but goes inside based on some faith in the man that he wasn’t aware he had.   
  
The scene looks innocent. Arthur is leaning up against the armoire with his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose and Eames is sitting on the bed in a pair of Cobb’s sweats and an old t-shirt. They’re balking the expectations Cobb had of them (truthfully, a part of him expected fighting and another expected fucking) and he’s not sure what else this could be.  
  
“What’s going on?” he demands, trying to get to the point before it can get obfuscated with more arguing.  
  
Neither of them rush to answer and Cobb turns his sternest look on them. Finally, Eames relents and stares across the room to Arthur, who is attempting every possible tactic in looking away. “Arthur’s been having trouble sleeping, same as me.”  
  
Eames has been dealing with it by staying up to all hours and chain-smoking on the deck while he sulks petulantly about nature, society, and any topic in between he finds fit to drag into the mess. Cobb knows because on any given night, he’s out there providing Eames with company.  
  
“We never had problems sleeping when we shared a bed,” Arthur says simply. “I just need one good night of sleep before this next job. That’s all I’m asking.”  
  
“And I’m pointing out that the man I love sleeping next to me is a bit problematic,” Eames retorts, fingers twitching as if in want of a cigarette – which Cobb refuses to allow inside the house. “Arthur, darling,” he says, sounding shocked and bewildered and Cobb tries to process the new information about a relationship that he still doesn’t know much about, not least of which the reasons why they broke up. “You cannot torture me like this when we are always but a snap away from the bridge between us collapsing and another three years of happiness is curtailed because we try to be adults and remember that only misery awaits. Please,” he begs calmly, even though his hands are fidgeting more than before.  
  
Cobb feels, suddenly, like a referee, ready to keep the men’s hands off each other if it comes to that.  
  
“Eames,” Arthur says. “Don’t think I don’t know why you’re here.”  
  
“I had to know, didn’t I?”  
  
Cobb is lost. He’s missed something, judging by the knowing looks the two are sharing and he feels compelled to stick his nose into their business considering that Eames has been living in his house, cooking pancakes for his children, and acting like a surrogate parent for the last six months. “Know what?”  
  
Eames doesn’t bother to look his way. Cobb is beginning to suspect that the apocalypse could be upon them and Eames wouldn’t take his eyes off Arthur.   
  
“And?” Arthur asks, sounding gutted.  
  
“And I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t wrong about any of it. Arthur,” Eames says, shifting on the bed and drifting over to the armoire to run his hands up and down the lapels of Arthur’s jacket – Cobb is too stunned to do anything but watch – before cupping his face with his hands. “I’d never resent you.”  
  
“You would,” Arthur stubbornly insists. “You would, Eames. You would.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Cobb manages to kick into gear around the exact moment that Eames leans in and kisses Arthur – who grabs a fistful of Eames’ shirt and hauls him closer. In seconds, they’ll fall to the bed if Cobb doesn’t do anything about it and Cobb, who’s had six months of Eames being supportive and kind and  _good_  and there, isn’t willing to admit there’s a spark of jealousy rising in him.  
  
He  _is_  willing to remind the two of their agreement.  
  
“Hey,” he snaps. “Break it up.”  
  
“Please, one night,” Arthur insists, turning to look to Cobb as if he’s suddenly become Eames’ keeper.  
  
Maybe somewhere along the way as the months passed by, Cobb has.   
  
Eames is searching his gaze as well – as if for validation or confirmation that he’s making the right decision. Cobb doesn’t know exactly what he’s expected to give here. He and Eames are civil and they raise the children with a give-and-take that’s made of both of them alternating between good cop and bad cop.  
  
Eames doesn’t know about how Cobb spends some mornings in the shower touching himself and thinking of Eames in the next room with his lips wet and his body sprawled all over his sheets. And now, Arthur has got his hands all over Eames and he’s looking to Cobb like he wants permission.  
  
“What do you want from me?” Cobb finally sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.   
  
“Stay,” Eames says at the same moment that Arthur says, “Say yes.”  
  
Cobb’s made more than a handful of bad decisions in his life, but he feels like the one he’s about to make could outdo them all. He studies Arthur for a long moment and weighs the value of an old friendship, but it’s Eames who convinces him.  
  
Eames has been staying with him and bearing half the burden of sliding back into an old life.  
  
Cobb has spent long enough trying to convince himself that Eames would be better off leaving. Eames hasn’t left and there’s no sign that he’s going anywhere. Eames drifts closer and brushes his fingers against Cobb’s neck. A simple shift of his gaze to the side shows Arthur is less than pleased with this, but he stays silent.  
  
“Dominic,” Eames murmurs, giving him a fond look. “I like to think we were heading in this direction. Indulge me?”  
  
Cobb has been indulging Eames’ whims for months, but in return his children reap the kinds of attention that they haven’t experience in years. Shouldn’t it be Cobb’s turn, now? Shouldn’t he get something?  
  
“So, we all stay,” Arthur finally speaks up.   
  
“Only if you don’t leave before the night is over,” is Eames’ reply, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Cobb to say it. The rustle of movement distracts him, but he doesn’t miss Arthur locking the door and pushing past Cobb to cup Eames’ cheek and kiss him.  
  
Cobb bites back a comment about how this is only supposed to be about sleep, but then Eames looks at him, smiles, and mouths ‘thank you’ and Cobb lets himself  _trust_  a con artist. It should be one of his greatest mistakes, but he doesn’t know at that point how wrong Eames will prove him.   
  
*  
  
Arthur does spend the night, but he’s gone the next morning before dawn breaks. This leaves Cobb to wake up in bed with Eames. He had always woken first with Mal, early enough to watch the sunlight spill over her messy hair. He’d woken up early enough to brush at the sleep in her eyes and to rub his fingers over her sun-warmed skin. Today, he wakes before Eames and catalogues the other man quietly.  
  
Eames snores with a gentle exhalation of breath and a light hitch every time he pulls in air. Without gel in his hair, it splays on the pillow and makes him look at least five years younger and two times more innocent. Cobb sits up slowly and shifts the sheets and realizes that he didn’t spend the night in his own bed.  
  
He swears under his breath and the noise is enough to rouse Eames – who always was something of a light sleeper, which also speaks to how stealthy Arthur can be when he tries if his departure hadn’t even woken Eames.  
  
“S’matter?” Eames rumbles drowsily.  
  
Cobb tries to catalogue the night’s events and feels gratified that he hadn’t gone completely out of control. Fistfuls of Eames’ t-shirt and bruising, burning kisses (against stubble that’s surely marked his cheek) are within the realm of Cobb’s allowance.  
  
Anything more than that and he’ll have to revisit his whole life, but it didn’t go further than harsh and imperfect kisses before they shared the bed.  
  
“If the kids came looking for me...”  
  
“They’d have come in here second,” Eames interrupts, arranging himself in bed as he props his elbow on the bed and rests his chin in his hand. “James always knocks here second if you’re preoccupied and Pippa is  _convinced_ she is too old to have nightmares that require Daddy’s protection.”  
  
Cobb falters and wants to insist otherwise, but Eames has been living there for six months and would know second-best.  
  
“What did Arthur mean?”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
Eames looks sinful and debauched in the early light of morning. He’s not even close to put-together and Cobb finds himself startled to realize he likes it this way. “When he said he knows why you’re here. Why are you here?” Cobb asks.  
  
“I had to know something.”  
  
“I heard that part, Eames,” Cobb says, stressed. “Why are you here?”  
  
“Because Arthur and I broke up for want of stability and consistency and the light of children in my life. Arthur and I broke up because, quite simply when all things boil down to it, I wanted you and the life you live and your beautiful family. I wanted to be here.”  
  
“And you just thought I’d open the door and let you in?”  
  
Eames looks pointedly at him, as if he knows a secret, and Cobb feels imminently stupid for a moment because he had let Eames do  _just that_  without even knowing.   
  
“Eames, I’m not some orphanage. You don’t get to just waltz in here and use me for my family,” Cobb sharply says, grabbing at his clothes and putting them on in a harried hurry, his anger starting to convince him that all of this is a mistake.  
  
Eames hasn’t moved. Cobb refuses to look at him because he’s not going to be swayed by a sleepy desire to get back in bed and fuck Eames now that Arthur is gone in a selfish desire to claim him.   
  
“What?” Cobb sighs as he reaches over for his pyjama trousers.   
  
“You do know that I always had a thing for you?” Eames says. “That Arthur convinced me to stop taking jobs with you because of that. That he convinced me that we should stop working together. So he could work with you, but I couldn’t. Arthur,” he continues, drawing out the man’s name into at least five sinful syllables, “didn’t trust me.”  
  
“Eames,” Cobb deadpans. “You once sold us out because you wanted the highest cut of the money. You turned Arthur in to the federal government of Bolivia once because you two were fighting. You...”  
  
“Yes! Thank you for the waltz through my history!”  
  
“I’m only saying that your self-preservation instincts are something of a legend. Arthur had good reason not to trust you.”  
  
“What does self-preservation and me wanting to jump your bones have to do with each other?” Eames wonders.  
  
“You’re always looking out for you, first.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And when you have kids, you can’t just  _do_  that anymore,” Cobb says, aware that he’s lecturing the other man, but knowing that it’s important enough that he has to. His children are not going to be sold out because, one day, Eames might be in a bad mood.   
  
“People can change,” is what Eames has to say for himself. “Sometimes for the worse,” he says, and doesn’t mention Mal – which is good because Cobb might not have hesitated in punching Eames for saying it. “And sometimes for the better. The question is, do you believe that the last few months with you here has been me changing or just a con?”  
  
Cobb finds that he can’t actually answer.  
  
There’s a long enough pause that Eames takes it as Cobb believing it to be the latter.   
  
“So good to know you trust me,” Eames mutters and rolls his eyes, shifting out of the bed and searching for his shirt. “Go,” he says, coolly. “The children will be wondering about breakfast soon and I know how James fusses if he doesn’t eat on the right schedule.”  
  
Cobb hesitates, knowing from years of marriage that it’s never a good idea to leave the room in the middle of a fight, but he and Eames aren’t married. They aren’t even together. They just share living accommodations and responsibility for the children.  
  
Despite Cobb’s knowledge that there’s no actual  _thing_  between them, he still buys a fresh pack of Eames’ favourite cigarettes and places them atop a box of Eames’ favourite candy on his nightstand.  
  
By dinnertime, the mood is all smiles again and it’s like nothing was ever awry in the first place.  
  
*  
  
It becomes a routine. Arthur appears from out of nowhere and disrupts their practiced and settled schedule. When Arthur isn’t there, they wake up and negotiate breakfast around a hurricane of chaos. They send the kids off to school and once in a while Cobb will pin Eames to the fridge and kiss him to the point of breathlessness where the neighbors would be able to see if the nearest neighbors weren’t miles away. Eames mostly does art forgeries during the day and Cobb calls around to look for teaching jobs – finding none, not in this economy and not with his history – and so he takes the odd job Miles passes his way designing homes. When the kids come home, Eames cooks and tells stories and Cobb makes sure homework gets done. There are baths and lullabies and strict bedtimes.   
  
They have consistency.   
  
And then the doorbell would ring and Arthur would show up and everything turns upside down. It’s been like this for a year now and for some reason on this particular visit, Arthur is taciturn and moody.   
  
Cobb calls him on it in the morning. He’s managed to wake up before Arthur and puts on coffee for the both of them. “I expected you to be out of here by now,” Cobb mumbles sleepily. Eames is still dozing away one room over and Cobb wants nothing more than to set his coffee aside and crawl back to bed where it’s warm and smells like  _home_.  
  
“I wanted to say goodbye.”  
  
“You could’ve said goodbye the other times, too. What’s so different this time?”  
  
“This time, I don’t know if I’m coming back,” Arthur says, bluntly. He clutches his coffee mug, but doesn’t drink from it. “You and Eames, you two are...you work around each other with the kind of efficiency that I rarely see in anyone. You don’t even have to speak. You finish each other’s sentences and you’re wearing his clothes and _christ_ , Cobb, I see the way he’s looking at you.”  
  
Cobb doesn’t mention that he’s been witness to the same look and it’s usually in Arthur’s direction.  
  
“You could stay.”  
  
“No,” Arthur dismisses, shaking his head. “No, I don’t want this. Dom, I love you and your kids. You know I love Eames, but this isn’t the life I ever wanted.” Cobb knows that resolute and determined look on Arthur’s face. He’s made up his mind. The last time he looked like that, he had decided to jump into inception, both feet in.   
  
Cobb rubs his palm over his face and tries to figure out his response.  
  
There is a part of him that is utterly fucking relieved to not be competing with Arthur any longer. He worries every time he shows up that Eames is going to want to go back to him. If Arthur stops coming around, the stability will become the constant.   
  
Cobb would be lying if he said he didn’t want that.   
  
“Are you going to say goodbye to him?” Cobb asks, his attention turning to the closed door that leads to the bedroom where Eames is still sleeping, sprawled out over the sheets and taking up the whole bed in the absence of anyone else.   
  
Arthur is looking there too. He shakes his head, a fond smile on his lips. “No. I said this goodbye already. Just tell him when he wakes up that I’ve always got eyes on him. He’ll understand,” says Arthur. “And you,” he continues, giving Cobb a worried look. “You deserve this. Don’t wrack yourself with guilt because of me or because of Mal. When Eames puts himself on the line for something that he wants, that he really wants, he won’t bolt out the door. Not unless you give him good cause,” Arthur admits after a beat.  
  
“You’ll be safe?” Cobb asks, more of a warning than a worry.   
  
If Arthur isn’t going to stay, he’s returning to a life that Cobb has happily left. It’s dangerous, there’s no doubt about that even if Arthur is one of the best out there. The problem is that it only takes one mistake for everything to come collapsing down around you.   
  
“I’ll have to find a new extractor,” Arthur says considerately, “and a new forger to work with. It won’t be easy to find people to rival the two of you, but I’m sure it’s possible. Anything is.”  
  
Arthur stays for another half hour and they finish their coffee while they discuss contacts in the industry. Cobb pencils a few numbers down that he remembers from his days on the run and presses the post-it into Arthur’s palm. The nervous glances Arthur gives in the direction of the bedroom door begin to increase and Cobb takes that as the sign that it’s time for him to go.   
  
He sees him to the front door and claps a hand to Arthur’s shoulder firmly before he can go.  
  
“You’re always welcome here,” Cobb says with the knowledge that if he doesn’t tell him that, he’ll regret it. He can’t live with those kinds of regrets anymore.   
  
Arthur smiles wryly -- the way often does when he’s amused -- and casts a glance out to the street behind him. “I need to make a home for myself out there,” he says. “But I will try and remember to visit, at least once in a while.”  
  
Cobb stays on the porch, watching him walk away.   
  
He calls all the numbers on the post-it later that afternoon and warns them that if they don’t seriously consider hiring Arthur, then he’ll doubt they ever had an ounce of sense to begin with. Eames, who is awake but still a groggy mess, contributes by roughly adding to each call that he still knows people and those people might be readily available to enact a kind of revenge if jobs go poorly.  
  
Cobb stifles an amused smile and just leans back into Eames’ hand when he presses it firmly against his shoulder and goes on rambling about what he’s going to fry up for breakfast.   
  
*  
  
Arthur still sends postcards with great frequency, bringing the world into Cobb’s home piece by small piece.  
  
They litter the fridge amidst the papers and drawings from school. The latest postcard is from Portugal and sits alongside James’ drawing of his family – which involves both a tyrannosaurus rex and a shark – a drawing which Eames had crowd with delight upon seeing before claiming the T-Rex as his personage. Cobb pries it off the fridge, not even having seen it come in. “You didn’t tell me Arthur sent something,” he says distractedly, only glancing up when he feels a brush of warmth against his fingers and sees that Eames has got his coffee ready. “Thanks,” he murmurs, leaning in for a brief kiss to Eames’ cheek, settling at the table to read it.  
  
“He phoned, too,” Eames calls from the stove. James and Phillipa frame him on the counter shouting ideas for animal pancakes. “He and Ariadne have started bumping into each other more often. Sounds like they’re becoming something of a team.” Eames flashes Cobb a lascivious grin. “And if I know Arthur’s definition of ‘team’...”  
  
“Not in front of the children,” Cobb interrupts.   
  
Phillipa is only seven and James is five. Impressionable ages and Eames might as well be an Impressionist for his talent in skewing a subject with a couple of strokes and rendering it permanent on a subject.  
  
Eames rolls his eyes, but he starts discussing the time that he was last in Portugal for a job. He’s become incredibly talented at taking the criminal details and turning them into something absolutely ridiculous. In this case, the men with guns have somehow become clowns. James seems to enjoy it, giggling as he stuffs his face with pancake-animal-limbs.  
  
“So?” Eames asks later, when the kids have been shipped off to school.  
  
Cobb is in the middle of one of his most recent designs for a client and he has absolutely no clue what Eames is talking about. “So?”  
  
“So, am I here for the long term or is this a con?”   
  
Cobb feels a flash of worry run through him, like they’re just ramping up for another fight. Eames doesn’t have that edge in his voice he normally does when things are wrong and Cobb relaxes just slightly. This isn’t about prodding them into an argument. This is Eames genuinely asking why Cobb is letting him stay.  
  
Cobb turns back to the drafting table, pencil in hand, and smiles privately. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens when Phillipa comes home with her first boyfriend,” he says, because there will always be a part of him that worries that Eames is here for his own purposes, but he has to trust as much as he can.  
  
He’s willing to take a leap of faith.  
  
Later that night, he drafts a letter to the address Arthur wrote on the back of the Portugal postcard and all he writes is the same message he always sends:  _We’re well, the kids say hello, and Eames still snores._  
  
They’re all fine, all of them in the various reaches of the world. It’s all Cobb can ask for.


End file.
